What kinds of issues and questions arise when considering participatory culture?
Since participatory culture encourages mass participation, that doesn’t mean that all of that participation will be positive. Wikipedia.org is an example of a platform that encourages participatory culture, but has developed a reputation for not being fully reliable. With a platform that can allow the participation of anyone, anywhere, it makes it hard for the average reader to differentiate between what’s accurate, and what’s false. Students are told to avoid Wikipedia for research purposes, for that very reason. The question is, to what degree should participatory culture be regulated? should restrictions to participation be in place? One could argue that creating more restrictions on participatory practices, would miss the point of the free form nature of participatory culture, and become a more elite/exclusive platform. One could also reach the conclusion, that participatory culture always ends badly, or that a participatory platform must accept the negative results, as that is inevitable, due to the nature of participatory culture.
A website that is an example of this inevitably, but is also very popular worldwide is Youtube. Since the Youtube platform is so massive due to its easy participatory nature, thousands of different sides to it are spread throughout. Videos on travel, history, world events, camping etc. There are over 3-4 billion videos on Youtube, and the vast majority of them will never be watched by many. Participatory culture is at it’s most toxic, when opinionated people become involved in it. The political side of Youtube is considered by many to be the most toxic, because it breeds all the negatives of participatory culture. Where people will focus on “click bait”, and sometimes false information to get more attention. When Youtube removes channels, and deletes videos, there is sometimes a strong outcry. The question is, how can a platform holder of participatory culture, properly moderate his platform without dissent? It’s seemingly impossible to do so without raging a fire. You just can’t make everyone happy, and that’s the reality of participatory culture.
